ORIGINALLY COMPOSED IN MARCH, 2007.
I live in Vancouver, Canada, a city renowned for its beauty and high quality of life. It is also a city with traffic that is much worse than most cities of its size (2+ million). The reasons for this are two-fold. The first reason is due to the steady inflow of population mainly from Asia and other parts of Canada over the past few decades. The second reason is due to a lack of an efficient road and highway network. During the Diefenbaker era, Vancouver residents chose not have the Trans Canada highway run to the downtown core, but instead to skirt the city and over the bridge to the North Shore. My understanding of the reasoning behind this was to preserve the quality of life. For the most part, this seems to have been achieved. In particular, the downtown core. Vancouver has truly one of the most beautiful, livable downtown cores in all of North America. But there is a cost to all of this.
Since my 30+ years of living in Vancouver, I have seen a huge increase in the amount of traffic. Even my brother-in-law's wife who lives in Seoul, a city of 11 million and insane traffic, was surprised at the increase in traffic from when she visited back in 2001 to most recently in 2005. Driving used to be enjoyable. I used to love cruising around town up to my mid 20's when gas was cheaper, but now driving has become a chore, even a burden. Everywhere you go, there is traffic AT ALL HOURS OF THE DAY.
The consequences of the choices made back in the '50s are being felt today. Neighbourhoods are getting noisier and more dangerous for pedestrians as drivers are forced to try and take side roads to avoid the gridlock on the main arteries. The road system of the Lower Mainland is completely overburdened. Part of the blame should lie with poor city planning. There are no real major arteries into the downtown core from the eastern suburbs. Every day you have thousands upon thousands of cars getting off of the Trans Canada highway onto 1st Avenue, a residential street. There are no left turn restrictions for the side streets, so if a person decides to turn left, they effectively paralyze the majority of traffic flowing into downtown. Cars stuck behind that left-turning car must either wait or dangerously try and switch lanes. Complete insanity.
Some of the bridges serving the Lower Mainland are also GROSSLY INADEQUATE. The two worst bridges being, the Lions Gate and the second being the Patullo. The Lions Gate had its lanes widened several years ago, but that did nothing to help more vehicles get over the THREE LANE bridge. Yes, you heard that right. A three-lane bridge into the downtown core of a major city. Utter nonsense. There was a proposal to build an entirely new bridge, but once again the wealthy and powerful NIMBY lobby of West and North Vancouver quashed any hope of that, just like the NIMBYists back in the '50s did to the Trans Canada highway. The Patullo bridge on the other hand is a NORMAL, four-lane bridge that is also grossly inadequate. The lanes are much too narrow.
